After 20 Years of Marriage, My Dad Came Out As Gay

He had come to visit me at college and as I exited the airport and pulled onto the freeway, he started delivering a vague and aimless speech about religion, sexuality and nature vs. nurture. What I gleaned from his ramblings were that he believed that human sexuality was a continuum and that if he hadn't been born and raised in a religious faith that shunned homosexuality, he might have gravitated more towards that side of the spectrum.

"Sure," I said. "That makes sense." And then we dropped the subject. We spent the rest of the day hanging out and talking about average, mundane things. Although my dad felt relieved because he thought he'd "come out" to me, I didn't get the message. In my 21-year old mind, he'd posed a hypothetical situation that had nothing to do with the reality of our life. It didn't compute. I didn't understand that it was my Dad's way of telling me he was gay.

It didn't sink in until a few months later when I received a call from my 13-year-old sister. She was upset and crying so hard I could barely make out her words. "What is going on?" she sobbed. "Dad told me he's gay. What is he talking about?"

That's when it hit me. I gripped the phone as tears starting spilling down my cheeks. I tried to stay calm for my sister's sake but didn't have any consoling words to share because I finally understood what my dad had been trying to tell me months ago. He was gay. Not maybe gay in some parallel universe. My dad was gay now, in our actual life. My dad was gay for real.

Although it had never crossed my mind that my dad might be gay, it wasn't a total shock either. Maybe, on some subconscious level, I'd always known he was different from other dads. It may sound reductive, but he wasn't a football fan, had a designer's eye for aesthetics and I'd never caught him ogling my friend's mothers.

That night, on the phone with my sister, when I finally understood what he'd been trying to say, I didn't experience a moment of disbelief – only the magnitude of truth.

Both my parents had been raised in the Mormon church. They met as virgins in college and married soon after. They had me a couple months shy of their first wedding anniversary and spent the next 20 years raising their four children and building a business and a life together. Although my family eventually left the religion, ours was a pretty conservative household.

During my childhood and adolescence, my parents didn't drink or smoke or talk about sex unless it was to vehemently warn me about the perils of pre-marital coitus. Since any kind of sexual expression (aside from procreation within marriage) was frowned upon, it was easy to rationalize my dad's lack of heterosexual enthusiasm as an abundance of spiritual devotion. This environment camouflaged my dad's true sexual identity, both from himself and the rest of us.

My dad was in his early 40s when he realized he was gay. He kept it to himself for awhile and then only told my mom. My mother is a bit repressed in general, so she was sad, but she somehow continued to function. Her religion and her personality did not equip her with the strength to make demands or hard choices. On the other hand, I think she sacrificed a lot to make sure her children were spared some ugliness.

My dad had run the show while they were married and continued to do so through their divorce. It was only after they realized their strained relationship was affecting us kids, they decided to fill us in.

My parents seemed hopeful about resolving things, but I was skeptical. They thought that "being gay" would maybe pass, but they also explored the idea of having an "arrangement" in their marriage. Ultimately, however, they decided to separate. They started attending couples counseling while also working with their separate therapists. My dad also sought out families who had gone through similar experiences in an effort to understand how other people had handled this uncharted territory. But after a year of trying to "work it out," my parents officially separated and my dad moved into an apartment across town.

By this time I was 25 years old and actually engaged to be married. It was especially stressful trying to plan my wedding while also being supportive of my parents while they hammered out their divorce settlement. Aside from the practical difficulties of trying to persuade two people who are fighting over dividing assets to foot the bill for caterers and flowers, it was also emotionally harrowing to watch my parents dismantle their marriage while my fiancé and I were trying to build ours. In the end, my parents pulled it together for our big day.

Soon after, their divorce was finally official. Feeling relieved, I told myself, "Great! Now we can all move on." In my naïveté I expected that my parents would now each find a new mate and resume their identities as responsible adults at the head of our family. Sure, there would be new partners to get used to, but it couldn't be that bad, right?

I was naive enough to think that the worst was over. I didn't have a clue about how their divorce would change the relationship between me and my siblings. I didn't realize how family dynamics would become drastically different. I hadn't understood how a divorce instantly creates two boats while the children scramble to keep afloat with a foot in each.

First off, new compatible partners failed to instantly appear. Newsflash: It takes awhile to meet the right person. Add a new sexual identity to the equation and it gets pretty complicated. My dad, who'd been living falsely as a straight person for 40+ years, experienced a second sort of "adolescence." He dated a string of different men, absolutely positive that it was True Love each time he met someone new. And he introduced each new guy to the family. He even brought dates to my grandma's funeral, Thanksgiving, my aunt's funeral, my sister's college graduation, and my baby shower proudly introducing them as his "soul-mate."

I considered myself an optimist, but still found it difficult to summon genuine interest in getting to know my dad's fifth soul-mate. Instead of accepting the situation for what it was (my middle-aged father, trying to navigate a new world as best he could) I selfishly clung to my expectations of how a "Dad" was supposed to act and focused on how his new identity was an inconvenience in my life.

My mom, on the opposite end of the spectrum, didn't go on a single date. Instead, she began writing to an old college friend. Their letters turned into a long-distance relationship, with him flying across the Pacific every couple months to visit. In between those visits, they would spend several hours on the phone each day, absorbed with recounting all that had transpired or been thought and felt in the last 24 hours. Having recently fallen in love myself, I should have been more understanding of this very normal honeymoon period, but I was still immature enough to be annoyed by my mother's giddiness in her budding romance.

It's been 12 years since the divorce. Both my parents have settled down. My dad met his true-forever-soulmate and thankfully they live in a progressive state and were able to legally celebrate their marriage. My mom's long distance relationship turned into a marriage also, with her husband moving across the ocean so they could continue their marathon conversations face to face.

My relationship with my dad now is very different than it was. Things were said during the divorce that were very hurtful. Nowadays, we do have a friendly (if somewhat shallow) relationship that I hope will continue.

Although the learning curve of my parent's divorce has been steep and painful, I'm grateful for the experience. It has made me a more realistic and more compassionate person, and it's taught me a lot about myself and what kind of parent I want to be for my children. Most importantly, it has made me realize how valuable my own marriage is and how lucky I am to have it.

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